If the tulip is suddenly Turkish, why do we call the oldest tulip "Tulipa hungarica"?

Question

If the tulip is suddenly Turkish, why do we call the oldest tulip "Tulipa hungarica"?

Answer 1

Well spotted. But, there's nothing sudden about tulips being from Turkey, did anyone really think these beautifully brightly colored flowers would have originated under the gray skies on the boggy Western edge of Europe? No offense meant to the inhabitants of that region. Just making a point about the climate and the emergence of such blooms.

Answer 2

What makes you think that's the oldest tulip? Tulip is a turkish word, like Talib, you know, turban.  Lots of eastern europe has been part of the turkish empire at times. In Eastern Turkestan, tulips grow wild, way up in the mountains. We call them kizilsha in Uighur.

Answer 3

doesn`t matter. Hungarians are ethnically related to Turks.

Answer 4

From a book on the subject:

"Naturalized in eastern Europe, Tulipa hungarica is a form of the complex 'species' T. gesneriana. It grows in the limestone gorge of the Danube River, along the border of Romania and Yugoslavia, at the south end of the Transylvanian Alps, where it flowers in April and May. This region once belonged to the Hungarian Empire, hence the name of this tulip."

See: http://books.google.ca/books?id=bP7p0eZe...

Just to add to this, once a species is given its specific epithet, taxonomists do not change these formal names on a whim. Therefore, we stick with this name even though the tulip is "suddenly" Turkish.

scienceb: What do grey skies have to do with flower colour? (Nothing, actually.)

Answer 5

Tulipa Hungarica is just one of many types of Tulip....